


Words and stones

by someinstant



Series: Truth to be a liar [2]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-09-22
Updated: 2011-06-03
Packaged: 2017-10-12 02:45:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/119915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/someinstant/pseuds/someinstant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The problem with the past is that it never quite lets go of the present.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Readers are advised to read the previous story in this series before beginning this one. Additionally, an English translation of the opening scene can be found in the notes at the end of this chapter.

_Poetry does not require new words; it is made by arranging words. That's what makes it so impressive. Through ordinary words, poetry might accomplish the words' dream: to speak the unspeakable, to express the last tip of our thoughts. You could picture the architect's materials as words: if you think of words as stones, you can build whatever you want to in accordance with the way you organize these stone-words. By rearranging the same pre-existing words, you get another outcome._  
Paulo Mendes da Rocha

* * *

 **Paris, France.  
18.12.14**

"Ton verre est vide," Cait said, owl-eyed. "Ça ne va pas du tout ; il ne faut pas que ton verre soit vide." She peered into her own glass suspiciously, then said, decisive, "Il nous faut plus du vin," and reached out to hook a passing waiter by the arm. The young man scowled, nearly dropping his food-laden tray. "Une autre!" Cait instructed grandly.

"Cait, vraiment, _non_ ," Ariadne protested, but without any real force. It was three in the afternoon, and she was more than halfway to drunk already: she hadn't eaten much that morning out of nerves, and lunch had been mostly an exercise in shaking hands and nibbling at the cheese and fruit provided by the department. Unsurprisingly, the wine was going straight to her head. "On a déjà bu une bouteille à nous deux, il n'est pas besoin d'une autre."

"Mais si, bien sûr," Cait argued. "Tu as l'intention de faire plusieurs thèses? Ça se fête. Et puisque tu as refusé que je t'organise une vraie soirée, nous sommes obligées de fêter ça _avec du vin_." Cait upended the nearly empty bottle of wine over Ariadne's glass, tapping the bottom to shake out the dregs.

Ariadne laughed. "D'accord, d'accord," she conceded. "Mais tu vas devoir me payer le taxi, parce que si ça continue comme ça je ne vais pas pouvoir rentrer à pied." The waiter returned, still scowling, thumping a bottle of wine down on the table and drawing the cork with a distinct air of annoyance. "Merci," Ariadne said, and the waiter rolled his eyes and walked away. Ariadne sighed contentedly. "Mon dieu, que j'adore Paris."

"C'est que tu es masochiste," Cait explained with the casual derision of one born outside the city, and poured new glasses for them both.

"Ce n'a pest-- Ce n'est qua pe je sois-- oh, fuck it all, I'm too drunk to manage French right now."

Cait blinked slowly, processing the linguistic shift, then said, "I may be too drunk for English. We will have to see."

"I've heard you give lectures on gender and hierarchical spaces while drunk," Ariadne said, taking a large gulp of her wine. "You'll manage, I'm sure."

Cait snorted. "That was for first year students," she said. "I could have been talking about elephants and clockwork robots for all the attention they pay." She brightened, then said, "I think I will try that next time."

"What?" said Ariadne, distracted. Her cell phone was buzzing in her pocket. "Shh, _shhh_ ," she told it, shifting in her chair so she could pull it out. "Why are you so _loud_?" she asked.

"Because I am somewhat drunk," Cait said. Then, seeing Ariadne had been addressing the phone, "But perhaps not as drunk as you."

"Hush, you," Ariadne said dismissively, and pulled up the message waiting for her. _congratulations_ , it read. _do I have to call you doctor, now?_ It was an unknown number-- but then, it always was.

"You have a very stupid expression on your face just now," Cait informed her. "From this I deduce that Arthur must have texted you."

"Shut up," Ariadne muttered, and tried to convince herself that the blush was from the wine, not embarrassment. She shoved her phone back in her pocket.

"No, I don't think I will," Cait said, leaning forward and propping her chin up on her hands. "I am being Jane Goodall, you see, studying the mating habits of a strange and complex species." She tilted her head to the side. "You have been like this since you came back from Argentina," she said. "Did you run into him while you were there?"

" _No_ ," said Ariadne, sharply. "I just-- we've been talking, a little. Over the phone."

Cait raised her eyebrows, clearly not buying Ariadne's denial, but willing to let it go. "What happened to _I will rip off his testicles with my teeth_? I thought we decided that was the plan, not making pathetic soupy facial expressions at cell phones?"

Ariadne drained the last of her wine, then poured herself another glass, not meeting her friend's eyes.

"Ah," Cait said wisely. "Well. For this, we may need another bottle," and reached out to collar another waiter.

* * *

Sometime after dinner and the third-- maybe fourth? it was hard to remember-- bottle of wine, Ariadne found herself at home on her sofa, staring thoughtfully at the waterstain on the ceiling near the window. It looked a little like a duck, if ducks could have antennae.

It was a good flat, alien duck waterstains aside: the herringbone floors were warm and scarred in comfortable patterns, and there was a tiny Juliet balcony off the back of the main room that overlooked the building's courtyard, which was overgrown in a pretty, ramshackle sort of way.

After the Fischer job, Ariadne found she was reluctant to distance herself completely from her previous life: she had worked a handful of extractions with Arthur, and sometimes Eames, but she had worked hard for her position in the graduate design program and she had no intention of letting that go. Still, she _had_ been glad to leave the crappy flat she'd been sharing with three art students and an infestation of roaches.

"You ought to buy," Miles had advised her, the semester after she returned from Los Angeles. "If you intend to stay here for any length of time, there's no reason why you shouldn't at least be comfortable. After all," he said, wry, "I imagine you can afford it now."

"Well, yes," she had conceded, reluctant. Thinking about the growing number of zeroes in her bank account made her dizzy, sometimes. "But wouldn't it look funny?" she asked.

Miles lifted an eyebrow. "Half of my students have trust funds, Ariadne. The other half kip on their friends' floors, and neither group particularly seems to care about the financial status of the other. I doubt anyone will think twice about it, beyond wishing they could do the same. Besides," he said seriously, "you should start building some equity. Stop throwing your rent money down a hole."

Ariadne snorted. "It's like you're channeling my dad," she said. But he was right, so she found a place that needed some attention-- _oh dear god, Ariadne, I didn't mean for you to buy a_ hovel, was Miles' appalled comment when he first saw the flat-- and made it her own. The kitchen was a gut job, all the windows had needed replacing, and it took three months of pointed bribery and arguing with the couple one floor up to have them fix their leaking bathtub, but it was coming along. Once the worst of the repairs were complete, she rented out the extra bedroom. She didn't need the income, of course, but she had found that she didn't feel quite like a student if she didn't have someone else's dirty dishes cluttering the sink.

"Not a student anymore, though," she told the waterstain. Eventually, she should paint over it. But not tonight. No paint, the ladder was in the cellar, and she was too drunk to manage either. "Finished with that, finally. Dr. Ariadne Greer," she said slowly, testing the sound. She lazily waved to the waterstain duck in greeting. "Pleased to make your acquaintance."

In the kitchen, something began buzzing at regular intervals. It was either her phone, or the refrigerator, which usually hummed as though it were about to explode. Ariadne let her head fall back against the sofa cushions, unconcerned, and eventually the buzzing stopped.

Ah. Probably not the refrigerator, then.

After a moment, the buzzing began again, thus supporting her theory that the sound was related to a cell phone, and not a kitchen appliance. "Someone should get that," Ariadne called out, and then remembered that there _wasn't_ anyone else: Cait had left an hour ago, taking the last of the wine with her, and Dorine, her roommate, was staying over at one of her boyfriends' apartments, like she did most weekends. Ariadne wasn't sure if it was Karl's turn this weekend or Mathys'-- Dorine's schedule was difficult to keep straight, sometimes.

"All right," Ariadne told the phone, pushing herself unsteadily to her feet, "hold your horses, I'm coming." She made it to the kitchen without tripping over anything-- quite the accomplishment, considering the way the floor was swaying underfoot-- and found her phone where she had left it, sitting next to an empty glass on the counter.

"Hello?" she said, and then remember that one had to hit _talk_ before anything happened. She tried again, pressing the button deliberately. "Hello?"

"You're a hard woman to track down, Dr. Greer," said a voice, and Ariadne let her hip thump heavily against the edge of the kitchen cabinet rather than try to enforce some sort of arbitrary perpendicular angle on her spine. "You probably have six or seven missed calls from me by now."

" _Arthur_ ," she said, deeply pleased. "I meant to text you back, but Cait and I went to dinner and I think I forgot." Or maybe it had something to do with Cait taking away her cell phone at one point, saying, _You will get it back when you can speak sensibly, or learn to pick pockets_. Which was a silly thing to have said, Ariadne thought. Eames had showed her how to lift wallets during the job in Istanbul, and Cait had been no challenge at _all_.

"Don't worry about it," he said. "I just wanted to call and congratulate you in person. How'd the defense go?"

"Oh, fine. Fine," Ariadne said, absently rubbing her hip. The counter was harder than she remembered. Her bed was soft, though, and not far away at all. "Well, mostly fine. Actually sort of awful," she told him, crossing the hall to her bedroom, "but Miles snuck me some scotch before it started, and Ebrennac was really sweet like always, so it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be." Ariadne flopped down on the mattress with a quiet _oof_ , the comforter bunched up under her shoulders in wrinkles. She squirmed a little, trying to get comfortable. "Dr. Astor was a stone bitch about my literature review, though."

"But it all worked out in the end?"

"Yep," she said happily. "There was wine and cheese and Cait paid for the taxi home, plus I have a bunch more letters after my name, now, which is cool." She blinked up at the dark ceiling. "I forgot to turn on the lights."

"Are you drunk?" Arthur asked after a moment, his voice censorious with mock disapproval.

Ariadne hummed in agreement. "Oh, very," she said. "There were a _lot_ of empty bottles by the end. I'm probably going to regret this in the morning," she heard herself say. "Because I am getting _old_ and cannot hold my drink."

"If you're old, I'm ancient," Arthur told her, sounding amused. "I don't think I've ever seen you drunk."

"Well, you can't see me now, either," she said, serious. "That would be very embarrassing. Which is probably," she paused and yawned, stretching her arms over her head, and lost her train of thought in the process. She turned her head to the side, then wrinkled her nose. Her clothing smelled like cigarettes. "My shirt smells like smoke," she complained to Arthur.

"Well, were you at a bar?" he asked. He was laughing at her, damn him.

Ariadne waved her hand above her face, dismissive. "Eventually. Le caberet est le salon du pauvre," she told him, and then, confidingly, "Plus that's where they keep the alcohol."

"You're not poor, you lush. I know about your offshore accounts."

Ariadne ignored him, trying to take off her shirt while keeping the phone pressed to her ear. The long sleeves were proving to be a challenge. But that was okay; she was very smart, she had a doctorate to prove it. She could handle sleeves.

"Ariadne?" Arthur's voice was tinny as the phone fell onto the mattress, and Ariadne took advantage of its absence to pull the rest of her shirt over her head.

"I win," she told her shirt, and went to work on her jeans. Clothing was interesting, she realized, kicking the denim across the room, following it with her underwear. If you did it right, it felt good to put it on, and even better to take it off.

"Ariadne?" something said near her shoulder. It was still Arthur, so she picked the phone back up. "What are you doing?" Arthur asked, sounding suspicious.

"I told you," Ariadne said, trying to be patient because Arthur could be a little slow, sometimes. "My clothes smell like smoke."

"So you're-- taking them off?" Arthur's voice sounded funny. Maybe the reception was bad; sometimes she didn't have much service in this part of the apartment.

"I don't want to sleep in smoky clothes," she told him, patient. "You wouldn't, either."

Arthur cleared his throat. He did that a lot when he talked to her; it meant he had something he wanted to say, but thought it wasn't appropriate. "No," he said, "I wouldn't."

Ariadne yawned again. "What time is it?" she asked, too lazy and liquid to turn and check the clock.

"Well, it's a little after eleven thirty for me, so it's ten thirty for you," Arthur said. His voice sounded almost normal again.

"So you're--," Ariadne tried to remember her time zones. "Somewhere that isn't France. Um, further to the east."

"Bucharest," he told her, and she nodded. She'd never been to Romania. There was a good poem about it, though-- something and extemporanea. She couldn't remember the author. Someone like Edna St. Vincent Millay, but not. Early twentieth century, female author. Depressed. Arthur might know; he knew lots of things no one else did.

"Arthur, who wrote that poem about Romania?" she asked.

"What poem about Romania?"

"You know," she said, impatient. "Life is a glorious cycle of song. It's by someone who stuck their head in an oven, maybe."

"Sylvia Plath? I have no idea," he said. "Frankly, I'm impressed you can remember what direction Bucharest is in relation to Paris at the moment, let alone come up with a poem."

"I'm drunk, not stupid." And freezing to death, actually, now that she thought of it. The radiator in her bedroom never seemed to work very well. That needed to go on her list of things to fix. "I think I'm going to go to bed," she told Arthur. "It's cold in here."

"Drink some water first," Arthur told her. "Or you'll feel like hell in the morning."

"I already did," she insisted. "Cait made me drink gallons before she left."

"Good for Cait. I should send her a thank-you note."

"I don't think so," she said, pulling back the covers and sliding in. "She doesn't like you."

"I've never even _met_ her," Arthur sounded exasperated. "How can she not like me?"

"Cait is very loyal," Ariadne explained, sleepy. "She thinks you're an excuse." She pulled the comforter up around her ears; the sheets were still cold, and she was beginning to regret not having put on pajamas or socks or _something_.

"What does that even mean?" asked Arthur, and she closed her eyes, listening to him breathe in her ear, a thousand miles away. "You're almost asleep, aren't you," he said, his voice low. Ariadne hmmed in response; if she stayed still, she felt like she was floating down a river made of honey. "How do you do that?" he wondered. "You lay down and it's like turning off a light. You're just _out_."

"Practice," she said, and yawned. Arthur chuckled. It was a nice sound. "You should laugh more," she said, and thought, _And love is a thing that can never go wrong; and I am Marie of Roumania_. "Dorothy Parker," she remembered, teetering on the edge of a dream. "That's who wrote it."

"Get some sleep, Dr. Greer," Arthur said.

"Don't call me that, it sounds ridiculous," she muttered, but he was already gone.

* * *

The next morning was damp and grey and painful for Ariadne, who awoke to an electrified headache running up and down her optic nerve and a stomach unsuited to anything but weak tea and toast. She spent the morning curled unmoving on the couch, waiting for the aspirin to kick in and plotting her elaborate revenge against Cait. Cait, she was sure, was the reason why everything after dinner was fuzzy around the edges. She didn't think there had been anything too horrifyingly awful, though: no embarrassing mishaps at clubs, no vomiting in the street, no drunken confessions. At least, not to Cait-- she thought she remembered talking to the waterstain on the ceiling in the main room at some point, but she did that sober, sometimes.

Eventually, the aspirin did its job and she felt human enough to manage a shower and proper clothing, pulling on a worn pair of jeans and a ratty long-sleeved t-shirt and sweater.

When the phone rang, she was in the middle of making herself a sandwich with two heels of slightly stale bread; at some point later in the day she'd need to venture out to the market, but the idea was distinctly unappealing. The number on the screen was withheld, and she suddenly remembered being naked and talking about Dorothy Parker to Arthur.

"Oh _god_ ," she said, appalled at herself. She had told him Cait thought he was an excuse for her lack of dating over the past two years, hadn't she. So much for _no drunken confessions_. Fuck. The phone buzzed again, and she bit her lip. She could ignore him, but-- no, it was better just to rip off the band-aid and deal with it.

She picked up the phone before she could over-think it. "I am _so sorry_ ," she said, her words tumbling over themselves. "You need to forget everything I said last night, because I was really, unconscionably drunk and I'm sort of dying of embarrassment here."

There was a surprised-sounding cough on the other end of the line, and then a warm voice said, "Clearly, I ought to have called last night, then."

"Yusuf," she said, mechanically, feeling the tops of her ears burn. "Sorry. Shit. I-- thought you were someone else."

Yusuf chuckled. "Evidently. I take it there was a good measure of celebration last night in honor of your successful defense?"

Ariadne groaned, sitting heavily on one of the two chairs crammed around the tiny cafe table in the kitchen. "There was a good measure of wine, anyway," she told him. "Enough that I shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near my phone."

"I'm certain it wasn't as bad as you seem to think," Yusuf said, probably trying to sound comforting, but coming off as more amused than anything else.

"Oh, I don't know," Ariadne said. "It could always be even worse than I remember."

"Did you leave threatening messages for a head of state?" Yusuf asked. "Try to initiate phone sex with a former grammar school tutor? Give a tell-all interview with a syndicated cable news program?" Ariadne said no, laughing. "Then I think you are probably fine," Yusuf declared. "You are certainly ahead of Eames, at the very least."

"I'm hungover," she told him. "The time to tell me ridiculous lies was when I was still drunk."

"I would never." Yusuf said, buttering his voice with a thick layer of hurt. "With you, my dear, I am never less than truthful."

Ariadne smiled, shaking her head. She had always liked Yusuf, although there were moments when she wondered if she ought. He had some pretty frightening-- if useful-- connections, after all, and the idea of his dream den creeped her the hell out. "Why did you call, Yusuf? If it was to offer congratulations, thanks, but you could have just sent flowers or something."

Yusuf sighed, reluctant. "Truly, I wish I were calling to congratulate you-- you know we are all very proud? You would think he invented you, the way Cobb brags whenever I speak to him. But," he said, and his voice became very serious, very quickly, "I am calling because of something on the wires. Someone has been inquiring-- very subtly, you understand-- into the whereabouts of a Patricia Archer."

Ariadne went cold, icy nausea settling in her uneasy stomach. "What did they want," she heard herself ask, lips numb.

"A job offer. A routine extraction," Yusuf said. "So very painfully routine that I can't help but imagine it does not exist." He paused a moment, then said, his voice weirdly gentle, "They suggested that Ms. Archer might have worked with a man called Grant Hammett in the past. They were looking for an architect, they said. This was two, maybe three days ago. I'm afraid I wasn't actively looking for such information," he said, apologetic, "or else I might have heard of it immediately."

"It's all right," she said automatically. Somewhere outside the rush of noise inside her head, she was impressed with how calm she sounded. "Souza? That's the only time I've used Archer, it has to be."

"I'm fairly certain," Yusuf confirmed. "There have been plenty of inquiries into Arthur's various aliases over the last few months as well, but he is used to disappearing, and this is the first I have heard of anyone looking for you. I found it-- concerning," he said. "That they connect Archer with Hammett would make me think they have managed to track you as far as Lisbon, but likely not beyond that. Still," he said, and let his voice trail off.

Ariadne nodded blindly at her stove. _Still_. She cleared her throat. "Right," she said after a moment. "Thanks, Yusuf. You'll let me know if you hear anything else?"

"Of course," he said. "Be careful, Ariadne. Souza-- he is not a pleasant man."

"I know," she said. "Really, thank you. I owe you."

Yusuf cleared his throat awkwardly. "Best not to say such things to those in our profession, my dear doctor," he said, and hung up without saying goodbye, as always.

Ariadne set the phone down, staring at its blank screen for a long moment. _As far as Lisbon, but likely not beyond that_. "Okay," she said, steepling her fingers and resting her forehead against them. She exhaled slowly, trying to settle her pulse.

It wasn't a surprise, not really. She had always known that there was a high likelihood that Souza would try to track down both her and Arthur; they had hid in Brazil by staying in plain sight, and she would have to be incredibly foolish to suppose they weren't on any number of security tapes. No, the surprise was simply that it had taken so long for Souza to trace one of them back to Europe. She had spent a few weeks after returning to Paris with the curtains drawn tight against passersby, and fighting the urge to wear dark sunglasses and baseball caps whenever she went out to class or studio or the market. But that had been nearly three months ago, and she had allowed herself to imagine that perhaps everything would be all right.

She shook her head. "But that," she muttered, "would be too damn easy."

 _If you ever think you might need to run_ , Arthur had said while they were preparing for the job in Madrid, her first attempt at extraction, _you probably should_. A somewhat ironic piece of advice, in hindsight, as he apparently applied that principle in his personal life as well as his professional one, but she suspected the theory behind it was sound. So.

She stood up, pocketing her cell phone. Her laptop was in the lounge; she grabbed it and carried it back to her bedroom, tossing it on the mattress. It was possible that Souza hadn't tracked her as far as Paris-- if he were still asking about Archer, that meant he hadn't made the connection to Ariadne Greer just yet-- but that was only a matter of time; she had switched directly from her Archer ID to her legal identity once she entered France, and the link would be unmistakable to anyone looking for it. But at least she had a little time to move, and she wasn't entirely unprepared to do so.

Her cache was tucked into a hollow space behind the baseboard near her bed, and she used the pocketknife on her nightstand to pry it back, revealing the little metal safe bolted into the wall. There were a handful of passports inside, and a bank bag with a mix of currency. Ariadne thumbed through the IDs until she found the ones she had used as Patricia Archer and Sara Webb, holding those separate and laying the other three on the bed next to the laptop along with the money. She locked the now-empty safe, carefully pressing the baseboard back into position.

Ariadne stood up, brushing off her hands-- she hadn't swept her room in too long, but it looked like she wasn't going to have time to worry about that for a while. "Okay," she said, thinking aloud, trying to remember the lessons Arthur had insisted she learn in the weeks leading up to the Fischer job. "Money and ID," she pulled a large messenger bag out of the wardrobe, "bag, laptop, I need to get a different phone, transportation, and cover." She slid her cell phone out of her pocket, tapping it against her palm a few times. Cover was the hardest bit-- she had friends, a roommate. A complete disappearance would result in Cait or Dorine or someone reporting her missing to the police, and that was no help at all.

But she _had_ just finished her defense. No one would think it odd if she decided she wanted a vacation after the last year and a half of writing her dissertation. Hell, even Miles had told her she needed to get away for a little while. And it was very nearly Christmas, anyway; she'd be able to blend in with the holiday travelers.

Mind made up, Ariadne pulled up Dorine's number and hit _talk_. It rang several times before Dorine picked up, sounding breathless. "Si ce n'est pas une urgence absolue, va-t'en," she said, sounding irritated and hoarse, and Ariadne could hear a man's voice-- Karl, maybe?-- saying something in the background.

Ariadne suppressed a snort, and quickly explained that she had decided to go visit some friends in Barcelona for the next few weeks, so Dorine would have the flat to herself until Ariadne got back.

"Mmhm," Dorine said, clearly distracted. "Autre chose?" she asked, and a masculine someone-- definitely _not_ the same masculine someone as before-- moaned in the background. Dorine was apparently branching out.

"Non," Ariadne said, rolling her eyes over the phone. "Amusez-vous," she said dryly, and hung up. She'd need to leave Dorine a note on the bathroom mirror or something to remind her, because there was no chance anything Ariadne had said to her had sunk in.

She grabbed a piece of paper from her drawing board. _Dorine_ , she scrawled, too hurried to bother with French, _You sounded a little busy over the phone, so I wanted to make sure you knew where I was. Haven't disappeared-- decided to take up a friend's offer to crash on their futon in Barcelona for a while. (Maybe a week or two? Might stay past Christmas. Haven't made up my mind yet.) You know me and Gaudí-- thought I'd go and commune with the guy for a while in celebration. Say hi to Mathys and Karl for me, and whoever that was I heard on the phone. I don't know if I'm jealous or just impressed at this point, honestly._

The note sounded breezy enough so far, she thought, but she felt a pang of unease. If Souza's men managed to connect Patricia Archer with Ariadne Greer, they'd have no problem finding her flat, and she doubted they'd care if Dorine got caught in the crossfire. Granted, Dorine could probably put up a hell of a fight if she needed to, but Ariadne didn't like the idea of leaving her totally in the dark.

Ariadne bit her lip, then wrote, _Just to let you know: last night there was someone in the courtyard for over an hour, and they kept looking up at our flat._ She felt incredibly low for writing that: Dorine had had a former partner follow her obsessively in the past, and Ariadne hated to trade on what she knew was an extremely unpleasant memory. But if it helped to keep her roommate safe, perhaps it wasn't such a bad lie.

 _I don't know if they were just waiting on someone or drunk or what, but it kind of freaked me out,_ she continued. _I'm going to let Mme. Thibault know about it before I leave, but keep the doors locked, okay? You might even want one of the guys (or all of them!) to come and stay with you while I'm gone, just in case the creep comes back-- I don't mind at all._

It wasn't enough, really, but it would at least let Dorine know she needed to be on her guard. Maybe she would even decide to break her _no men during the workweek_ rule and stay with a boyfriend for a while, just in case. Ariadne signed her name with a flourish, and wrote the date at the top.

So that was one cover story taken care of. Ariadne went and taped the note to the vanity mirror in their shared bathroom, grabbing her toothbrush and a few other things on her way out and depositing them on the bed next to her messenger bag. Cait was going to be more difficult, so Ariadne decided to skip that call until she had worked out what she wanted to say with a little more finesse. She could call Miles, though-- probably ought to, just to have him pass word along to Arthur and Cobb.

She dialed the number while pulling clothes out of her wardrobe: something dark and long-sleeved, a heavy jacket, a blouse, another pair of jeans, a couple t-shirts, a scarf, gloves, a knit hat-- did she need boots? Dress shoes? _Be different people in different places_ , she heard Eames say, _Different classes, different professions, different ages, different bodies. Hide your ears and hands-- they're hard to change and people remember piercings and chipped nails._ She wondered if she ought to take a suit or something. Really, she had no idea what she might need, or how to fit it all into one small bag-- it had been much easier to do this in September, when she hadn't had the choice or time to think about it all.

Miles answered on the second ring, saying, "I thought for certain you'd have a terrible hangover today, Ariadne."

"I do," she said grimly, grabbing a few pairs of underwear and some socks and tossing them into the growing pile on her bed. "I've also got people looking for me," she told him. "One of Cobb's contacts just called. They've got the alias I used to get out of São Paulo in September, so the hangover's the least of my problems today."

There was a moment's silence, and Ariadne heard something creak heavily in the background. "Oh, my dear," Miles said at last, sounding distressed. "What can I do?"

"If you could call Cobb and have him get in touch with Arthur, that would be incredibly helpful," she told him, trying to sound upbeat and confident. "I'd call them myself, but I need to get rid of this phone before I leave-- which means they won't have my number anymore."

"What shall I tell them?" Miles asked. Ariadne started separating her clothes into two piles: _wear_ and _pack_. The jacket was _wear_ , as were the gloves, jeans, sweater, blouse, hat, and scarf. The rest she'd find a way to fit into the bag-- maybe she could roll them up? And shoes, right-- something to run in, and something more upscale.

"Tell Cobb I'll call him when I've decided where I'm going, and he can pass my number along to Arthur," she said, grabbing a pair of black flats from the floor of the wardrobe and shoving them to the bottom of her bag. "Arthur needs to know that Souza's traced us both as far as Lisbon, maybe farther than that, but possibly not." Ariadne began cramming her clothes into the messenger bag, shoving t-shirts and socks around her laptop and into the corners. She decided to leave the suit-- too bulky, and she'd never get the wrinkles out-- and grabbed a jersey dress from the wardrobe instead. Much less complicated. "He doesn't have my real name yet, as far as I know."

"Is there anything else I can do to help?" said Miles, his voice anxious. "I'm so sorry to have got you into all of this, Ariadne."

Ariadne smiled, shaking her head. "Miles, it's okay," she told him gently, just as she always did whenever the question of Cobb and dream-sharing and her recruitment came up over the past four years. "You had nothing to do with this, and it's not your fault. I don't regret it. Besides," she said, tossing a tube of toothpaste and a small zipped makeup case into her bag, "I can handle this."

"Of course," Miles said, his voice thick around the edges. "I never meant to imply otherwise."

"I know you didn't," she said, looking at the bank bag and passports still left on the bed. _Keep the essentials on your body if you're on the move_ , she remembered, and went to look for the cheesy money belt that her aunt had given her the first time she went overseas in high school.

"Do you have a plan for where you'll go?" Miles asked while Ariadne rooted around in the top drawer of her dresser.

" I think I have an idea," Ariadne said, still groping through the drawer. Why did she have so many scarves? She really didn't wear them all _that_ often; it was like they had multiplied in the dark when she wasn't looking. "I'd rather not say, if that's all right," she said, apologetic. "Not that I don't trust you-- I just don't want there to be any reason for Souza to start looking at you, too, Miles." She pulled her hand out of the drawer, triumphant, clutching the money belt.

"Of course," he said. "Forgive the old man his follies."

"Miles," she sighed, and started distributing the bills and IDs around the belt. She decided she'd keep her legal ID in her wallet, the way she always did. "There's nothing to forgive, and you know it." She zipped the belt up, then stood back for a moment. "All right," she said, half to herself and half to Miles, "I think I'm as packed as I'm going to get."

"Please be careful," Miles said, and Ariadne was startled to hear a quaver of age in his voice.

" _Hey_ ," Ariadne said, sitting down on the bed. "None of that. Look," she told him, making her voice bright and cheerful, "I'm just going to lie low for a few weeks until Souza gets bored and stops looking. You said I needed a holiday, anyway, right?"

"This is not precisely what I had in mind," Miles said dryly, and Ariadne smiled.

"Yes, but it's what I've got," she said, serious. "I'll be fine. I was tough enough to put up with five years of Professor Astor's bitching, right? I'm tough enough to handle this. I'll check in with Cobb, and he can let you know how I'm doing, okay?"

Miles sighed. "All right," he said, and cleared his throat. "I suppose this means you won't be at Henri's for supper tomorrow night, then."

Ariadne groaned; Ebrennac had planned to have her and several other graduate students in the department over for dinner on Sunday. "Shit, I forgot about that. Could you make my apologies, do you think?"

"Of course I can," Miles said. "Where shall I say you've gone?"

"Barcelona. I have some friends there," Ariadne said, and glanced at the clock on her nightstand. It was a quarter after two, and Cait would be leaving for the studio at three. She needed to catch her before Cait left her apartment. "I have to go, Miles," she said, reluctant. "I want to be out of here in an hour or two at the latest."

"I understand," he said with forced cheer. "Well. Good luck, my dear. I'm sure everything will work out for the best."

"It will," Ariadne agreed, and said goodbye before her throat thickened any. Then she stared down at the phone in her hand, reluctant to make her last call. But it was the best she could think of at the moment, and she didn't have the luxury of refining this particular design. She nodded sharply to herself, and made the call.

"Cait," she said when it went through, "I need a favor."


	2. Part Two

**Castelrotto, Italy.  
19.12.14**

The cobblestones were sticky, clinging to her bare feet like syrup. Forward progress was an effort: her leg muscles burned, pulling uselessly against the viscous stone. Ariadne reached out to grab hold of a passing lamp post, hoping to use the iron base to pull herself out of the street. Her fingers brushed the metal, but it was too cold, biting, burning her, and she couldn't hold on.

"This isn't how it goes," Arthur told her. The left side of his head was collapsed, fallen inward, the skin splintered open like broken sugar on crème brûlée . He didn't seem to notice. "Watch," he said, and walked away. His steps echoed on the stone, and there was something slick and red on the underside of his shoes.

"I don't think this street is done yet," Ariadne said, watching the cobblestones creep hungrily up her legs. Their weight was overwhelming. "The stones are still soft."

"It's fine," Arthur said. There was wet yellow bone showing behind the torn skin at his temple, and Ariadne didn't think she could cover it with make-up this time. "You just have to keep moving."

Ariadne opened her mouth to ask him how, and a stone crawled inside, settling heavily on her tongue. It was soft and gritty, a lump of dough left to rise on the beach. She swallowed, and the weight slid slowly down her throat, choking her as it went.

"That's not going to help you keep up," Arthur said, crouching down beside her. He pulled a chess piece from his pocket and set it on cobbles next to her. She was sinking down into them, now, petrifying from the inside out. Arthur reached out with a finger, tipping the little brass bishop over. It made a soft _clink_ against the stone, rolling away from her in a slow semi-circle. "See? You're already awake," he said, and the world swung sideways, uneven and jolting, and Ariadne jarred her forehead hard against the window as the driver eased the bus around a hairpin turn.

" _Ow_ ," she said reflexively as she opened her eyes. She sat up in her seat, feeling the hours of uncomfortable sleep in the ache of her neck and and the twist of her spine. Across the aisle a college-aged kid-- Canadian, from their brief conversation at the station some hours earlier in Trento-- grimaced sympathetically.

"All right?" he asked her, voice hushed in deference to their fellow travelers, most of whom were still dozing fitfully.

"Yeah," Ariadne said, rubbing at her forehead. "It was a bad dream, anyway." A watery pink light was beginning to wash the eaves of the occasional chalets which dotted the valley floor, snow hanging heavy on the branches of evergreens. As the bus trundled around another curve, Ariadne could see a tiny play-set of a town, complete with gingerbread houses and a bell tower topped with a sweetly-curved cupola, the whole scene dwarfed by the pale cliffs of the Dolomites to the north. "Oh," she said quietly.

"I know, right?" said the young man. "It's like I woke up in _The Sound of Music_ or something, not Italy."

Ariadne nodded, then bent to retrieve her bag from where she had stashed it under the seat, the strap wound several times around her leg to prevent theft. Cait had written the walking directions to her family's property on a paper napkin, mouth tightly drawn, and Ariadne had stuffed hurriedly them inside the flap pocket of her messenger bag.

"I do not believe you," Cait had said flatly more than thirteen hours ago, staring at her from across the outdoor cafe table. It was cold, misting slightly, and Cait's breath hung in front of her like cigarette smoke. "Not for a moment. Yesterday, you are fine, the top of the world. Today, you decide you need to go to Italy. This very moment, alone, and for several weeks. There is something very wrong," she said, biting off her words with even white teeth, "and I want to know what it is."

Ariadne had shaken her head, refusing to budge. "You're not going to win this one, Cait," she said. "If you don't think you can help me," she said, keeping her voice even, "that's okay, I'm asking for a big favor here, I understand." She glanced at her watch. "But I don't have time to fight with you, and I'd much rather not."

Cait exhaled heavily through her nose. "You aren't going to tell me the trouble," she said at last.

"No," Ariadne said, "I'm not."

"You want to leave Paris to stay at the house in Kastelruth, even though it is a sty with no central heat and you have no idea how to get there. You want me to mail several packages for you," she said slowly, as though adding up a column of complex figures in her head, "although they have no names on them and you refuse to say what is in them. And if anyone asks, I am to say that you are _not_ in Italy, but have gone to Barcelona to stare longingly at Casa Batlló yet again. I am not to call you, because you won't answer your cell phone. I am not to email you, because you won't be checking _that_ , either." Her mouth was a thin rose-colored line, and she was utterly furious. "And I am _not to worry_ ,"she spat, "because you are _fine_."

Ariadne experienced a profound flash of sympathy for Arthur in that moment. She sighed, and tried to think of something to say which wasn't uselessly condescending. "Okay," she said, deciding on an unspecific, but not untrue story. "Fair enough, you're right. I'm in some trouble," she said. "It's not good right now. I've known it might be coming for a while now, though, and I found out a few hours ago that I need to leave, and I need to do it as soon as I can."

She chose her next few words carefully. "Something happened in Brazil, after Argentina. It didn't happen to me, it was someone else, a friend, and it was pretty bad. They needed some help, so-- I helped. I'm not sorry I did," she said, decisive. "I would do it again. But because I did what I did, I've got some people looking for me."

Cait sat back in her chair. "These people," she said carefully, "are they capable of arresting you? Or your friend?" It was a very polite way of asking, _Will I be charged with aiding and abetting a criminal if I help you?_ , and Ariadne felt a faint smile at the corners of her mouth. The etiquette lessons foisted on Cait by an over-zealous grandmother apparently had their uses in peculiar situations.

"No," Ariadne had told her, and saw the relief flash across Cait's face. "Not unless they've paid some people off. They're more like-- freelancers. Which," she said, grimly, "is probably worse."

"Then this is something we take to the police," Cait insisted, the relief replaced by worry, and Ariadne said, " _No_ ," fiercely enough that the couple at the next table looked over at her. She smiled apologetically at them, and then said, "No," again in a quieter voice, but with no less strength.

"The help I gave wasn't legal," Ariadne said, blunt. "Don't ask what it was, because it's not important. What's important is that I leave Paris _right now_ , and that you forget we talked about this. I'm going, regardless of what help you can give me, Cait," she said. "And even if you disapprove-- and you're probably right to do so-- I _need_ you not to mention this to anyone. At all." She reached out and to take hold of her friend's hand, and squeezed Cait's fingers. "I'm being paranoid, probably, but it's safer that way for both of us."

"Ariadne," Cait said, her forehead deeply furrowed, "I really don't think--"

"I can take care of myself,"Ariadne told her, smiling crookedly. "Believe me, this is something I can do."

Cait looked at her for a long moment, then squeezed her fingers and let go. "Then give me a pen,"she said on a sigh, spreading a napkin out over the table top. "The house is difficult to find if you can't read German."

Ariadne handed over a pen, and watched as Cait drew a rough map, writing instructions alongside it. "Thank you,"she said, soft.

Cait looked up. "You know I am so angry at you this moment I want to scream," she said. "But I also would rather that you not die horribly, which is what I keep imagining will happen if I do not concede to your ridiculous plan. So I am restraining myself."

"I know," Ariadne said, wryly. "You have no idea how well I understand the feeling." She took the finished map that Cait offered, as well as a small brass key on a cheap silver ring, both of which Ariadne zipped into the interior pouch of her messenger bag. She slid three manila envelopes across the table and stood up. "I'll let you know I'm safe as soon as I can," she said, slinging her bag across her shoulder.

"And when you get back," Cait had told her, taking up the envelopes and standing as well, "you will tell me what this was all about."

"Yes,"Ariadne had promised, turning to kiss Cait's cheeks. "When I get back home, I'll tell you everything."

It had been a long, complex, and frustrating trip, full of competing train schedules and bad rail station coffee. She first used her credit card to buy a ticket to Barcelona, then left the train at Valence in order to double back to Lyon where she switched IDs and paid cash for a ticket to Torino. Once in Italy, Ariadne switched IDs yet again, waited for two hours for a train to Verona, and then switched to the northern line to Trento. At Trento she had stumbled blearily to the bus station, and managed to purchase a ticket to Castelrotto-- Kastelruth, to the German-speaking population-- where Cait's family had a small holiday property.

"Very pastoral, very nearly Austrian," Cait had told her once, describing the town where the Brossards spent most of their summers. "Excellent skiing. And there is a yodeling festival every year, if you can believe it."

Looking out the town through the bus's fogged windows, Ariadne found she could easily believe it. _Always imagine new places_ , Cobb had insisted during that first job, and Ariadne rather suspected that the same advice could be applied to the art of disappearing. And Kastelruth-- the German name really did suit it much better-- was certainly a new place for her.

Thinking of Cobb reminded her that she had promised-- hours ago, while waiting for the train to leave Verona-- to let him know she made it to her destination, so she bent to dig through her bag again and pulled out the cell phone she'd bought at the train station in Torino. _Nearly there_ , she tapped out once she had it in hand, _Maybe half hr left. Am fine, no probs. Cant sleep on mvng vhcls, tho._

It took several minutes for Cobb to respond-- unsurprising, given that it was about ten at night in California, and he had two kids with bedtimes to enforce-- and Ariadne was busy trying to pull her hair back into some semblance of a bun when her phone buzzed at her. _Glad to hear it,_ Cobb's response read, _Nothing new on wires, Y says. Think youre clean for now._

 _Thnx for the info. Will call when have eaten, slept_ , she wrote back.

Cobb's reply was immediate. _Sounds good. & call A, please. Is being obnxs & planning elab rescue._ He followed with a long string of numbers that Ariadne took to be Arthur's current phone number.

 _Will do_ , she told Cobb, suppressing a snort. _Go read to your kids or smthng, Ive got this one_.

The bus was entering the outskirts of the town, sliding slightly around corners on the narrow slush-covered streets, and the rest of the its passengers were beginning to wake. Ariadne keyed in Arthur's number.

 _Still not dead_ , she wrote. _Pls stop annoying C & calm down. No rescue ncsry_.

The response was nearly immediate, and Ariadne had to stifle a laugh as she read it. _i am never annoying. also, am perfectly calm, c lies like a dog_. Then, a few moments later: _i owe you a rescue anyway_.

She rolled her eyes. _That was on the house. No repayment needed_ , she tapped back, then looked up. The bus was rolling to a stop along one side of the town square, opposite a small stone church. _Have to go_ , she told Arthur. _Am in town, will call in few hours after settled_. She slid the phone into her pocket without checking for a reply from Arthur, and waited for the driver to open the door to let her and a handful of other travelers out.

Her legs felt swollen and painfully stiff as she stepped out of the bus into the thin morning air. Ariadne wrapped her coat more closely around her torso, and debated pulling her hat out of her bag-- the wind was surprisingly strong and she could feel it biting hungrily at her ears and nose. She pulled on her gloves, then took Cait's instructions out of her pocket and headed off in search of breakfast and the Brossards' house.

The town was still half-asleep, and painfully charming: the snow was thick and untouched on railings and rooflines, and there were fir garlands punctuated with the occasional copper lantern strung between shop fronts in deference to the season. There was a hotel along one side of the square painted with murals which had to be at least two hundred years old, the colors weathered against the white plaster walls, but still eye-catching. She paused for a moment, admiring the elaborately painted images of the Madonna and Christ-child near the roof's peak, the knotwork of vines and birds around windows, the life-size portraits of a soldier and a farmer flanking the door, and-- rather disturbingly-- a sweet-faced cherub with a knife in hand, holding up the severed head of a pig.

"Interesting local color," she observed, and made a note to ask Cait about the hotel's history when she got the chance.

She found breakfast with relative ease, following the smell of baking bread and strong coffee across the street from the frescoed hotel, stopping at a bakery which had just opened its doors. She bought a loaf of rye bread, still warm from the oven, and several apple tarts, employing the time-honored communication method of all foreign travelers of pointing and nodding emphatically while the girl behind the counter patiently pulled out first one tray of strudel, and then another.

"Danke schön," she said after a moment of wracking her sleep-deprived brain for the correct response, finally coming up with an image of Matthew Broderick singing something by the Andrews Sisters into a bar of soap. It was apparently the right thing to say, but she made a note to pick up a German phrasebook at the first opportunity. If she planned to stay for any length of time, it would be helpful to at least be able to buy food without resorting to complex pantomimes and pleasantries gleaned from classic eighties teen movies.

Breakfast achieved, Ariadne turned back to Cait's instructions. The house was on the outskirts of town, apparently, a good fifteen minute walk from where she was. And while the snow was cleared from Kastelruth's main streets and square, it wasn't easy going at all once Ariadne turned onto the winding lane that-- she hoped-- led to the Brossards' property. The snowfall was a day old, perhaps, and a thin frozen crust had formed on the top of drifts during the night. The effort of trudging through the shallow drifts weighed down by her bag and the paper sack full of baked goods had Ariadne panting softly and wishing she were wearing fewer layers underneath her heavy wool coat.

Her shoes were soaked through and the bottoms of her jeans were crusted with snow by the time she found the property, a comfortable two-storey chalet-style house with bottle green shutters covering its square windows. It was set back from the road, and the hillside fell sharply away from the rear of the house. Ariadne made her way to the doorstep, kicking some of the snow off the stoop with her feet to outline the step's edge. Back in the village, she could hear the peal of the church bells breaking through the early morning stillness: seven o'clock. "Right," she said, and juggled her bags briefly, searching for the key. "Let's see what we've got to work with."

The house was well-built and no-nonsense on the inside, all wood and plaster and slightly musty-smelling from being uninhabited since summer. Ariadne set her bags down on a worn plaid sofa, taking off her gloves and coat as well. It wasn't warm inside by any stretch, but simply being out of the wind was enough to make it feel much more comfortable.

Ariadne was relieved to find that the lights worked when she tried them; there was a wood stove in the main room for heat, so she wouldn't have frozen to death without power, but it was awfully difficult to charge a cell phone or laptop with a wood-burning stove. She had less luck with the water, however: the pipes clunked and rattled in the walls when she tried the tap in the kitchen, but nothing came out. She suspected that the Brossards had cut off the water to prevent the pipes bursting in their absence, which meant she was going to have to find the water main or well or whatever the house used and turn it back on if she wanted indoor plumbing.

All in all, she was quite pleased; it wasn't the Ritz, sure, but it also wasn't the sty Cait had suggested it might be. Not too bad for an improvised hide-out.

"Okay," Ariadne said, going back into the main room. "Heat first, then water." She knelt down by the stove, a giant black cast-iron monstrosity, and found the chimney's damper. Once she was relatively certain it was open and she wasn't going to die from smoke inhalation, she used some of the tinder and matches she found in a box in the corner to lay the fire, watching the small yellow flames lap hungrily at the resin-filled pine. She knelt in front of the stove for several minutes, slowly feeding the fire larger pieces of wood. When she was certain that it would burn on its own for a good while, she closed the grate and stood up.

Running water proved to be a trickier venture. Ariadne was fairly certain that the house, given its age and distance from the center of town, would be run on well water, which meant that there had to be a pump somewhere-- either in the cellar or outside, most likely. The cellar proved to be a small stone-lined crawl space filled with garden tools and broken ski poles and empty gas canisters, but no water lines or pump mechanism. It was only after several minutes of chewing on her bottom lip in frustration that Ariadne thought to check the small outbuilding off to the side of the house. And after a relative eternity of fiddling with pointlessly complex machinery, Ariadne had the satisfaction of hearing the pump hum grudgingly to life.

By the time Ariadne finally had the chance to change out of her damp jeans and socks and warm herself in front of the steadily-heating stove, it was well into midmorning, and she was too tired to do more than eat half an apple tart and curl up on the sofa with a scratchy felted blanket. She fell asleep to the sound of flames hissing quietly in the stove, and if she dreamt of anything in particular, she didn't remember.

* * *

It was early evening before Ariadne woke up, hungry and a little stiff from sleeping in an uncomfortable position. After stoking the fire, Ariadne ate the rest of the tart she'd eaten in the morning-- it was very good, although she imagined it would have been much better warm-- and drank a little water before picking up her phone to call Arthur.

He picked up on the second ring, and she heard him tap the mic twice rather than say _hello_.

She smiled; Arthur's supremely cautious phone habits always made her want to start conversations with something like _The elephant crows at noon_ , or _I heard a nightingale in Central Park today_ , just to see what he would do. But such experiments would have to wait for a slightly less stressful situation. "It's me, Arthur," she said.

"Ariadne," he said, audibly relieved. "I was just about ready to call you and make sure everything was all right."

"Sorry," she told him, settling back on the sofa and pulling the blanket up over her legs. "I didn't sleep much on the way here and then I had to figure out how to work the pump when I got in, and it pretty much wore me out. I slept longer than I meant to."

"Pump?" Arthur asked, and she could hear his eyebrows climbing upwards. "Please tell me you have running water." She told him briefly about the house and her quest for indoor plumbing, and Arthur snorted in amusement. "Let me get this straight," he said, his voice dry, "when it's me who needs to run, you have us hole up in a four-star hotel in a major metropolitan area. When it's just you, you run off and play Heidi meets _Little House on the Prairie_ in a shack that doesn't have heat. I think that probably says something about how you see me, and I'm not sure it's flattering."

"Shut up, it does not," she told him, laughing, although there was probably a little bit of truth to what he was saying. Arthur just wasn't a pastoral sort of person. "And I have heat!" she insisted. "It's just the fiery kind. I'm really very comfortable. Look," she said, trying to explain, "staying here makes sense, I swear-- I'm working off of straight cash, right now. Sara Webb was the only ID I had with credit cards that matched-- and obviously that one's not any good anymore-- and using a pre-loaded card or cash at a hotel would be like putting up a giant blinking sign that says, _Traveling under a fake name!_ on the roof of the building. So I needed someplace I could hole up for a while that wouldn't cost anything. This was the first thing I could think of and it fit. Plus," she added, "the town's kind of nice. I like it. It's like walking through a Christmas card."

"Sounds-- very Thomas Kincaid," Arthur said, distracted. "What do you mean, you don't have any other cards-- you don't have any other dummy accounts?" he asked, clearly concerned. "I didn't make any others for you during the Fischer job? I could have sworn I made more than one."

"No, you did," Ariadne said, quickly. "I was just stupid and haven't done any maintenance on the ones for Archer and Hunt in the past two years. My fault. I didn't think I'd need them. Thought I was done," she said, wryly. "And then when I got back from São Paulo, I wasn't sure who I'd need to talk to in order to come up with some new accounts."

"You should have just asked me," Arthur said. "I would have done it, you know that."

"I know," she said, and she did. "But you've had better things to do recently than hack into servers and invent credit histories for me."

"Not really," Arthur said mildly. "Poland was really boring."

Ariadne rolled her eyes. "I'm calling bullshit on that," she told him. "You've been working on something since you left Zurich. I know you, you're funnier when you're working a job--"

"What the hell?" said Arthur, blankly. "I'm _funnier_?"

Ariadne ignored him. "--and since you said you wouldn't take commissions while your name is still floating around, my bet is that you're planning something that involves taking down Souza. And considering current circumstances," she said with more confidence than she actually felt, "I think you should deal me in."

There was a heavy silence from the other end of the line, and Ariadne held her breath. She was lining up her most persuasive arguments-- she wasn't sure what they were, really, other than _This involves me, too_ , and _Remember how much waiting in tower sucks?_ \-- when she heard Arthur laugh, sharp and sudden. "I had this speech all worked out," he said, sounding a little embarrassed, "about not being able to do everything myself, and not giving you enough credit to make your own choices and a bunch of other things. It was pretty good. I even wrote it out, for christ's sake."

"I want to hear it," Ariadne said immediately. Hell, it was probably the closest thing to a love letter or an apology she was ever going to get from Arthur. "Forget I said anything, I want to hear the speech."

"Not a chance in hell," he said easily. "It's unnecessary, apparently."

"It's very necessary," she argued, feeling a foolish smile settle on her face. "I'm having second thoughts. Come on, convince me."

Arthur snorted. "You need convincing like a drunk needs another shot."

"You're not impressing me, here."

"Hey, Ariadne," he said, "I've got a job lined up. Know any good architects?"

Ariadne tucked her feet up underneath her on the sofa. "That's a pretty crappy speech," she observed.

"Well, I don't have my notes in front of me," Arthur told her, annoyed. "I'm improvising." He cleared his throat, and his voice grave this time. "Seriously," he said, "I promised you I'd ask someone for help before going after Souza, and I'm doing that. I know I'm not great at letting other people do things for me, but-- you're the best possible person for this job. I've never seen anyone come anywhere near what you can do in your designs, you don't panic under pressure, and if I want this job to have any chance of success, I'm going need your help. Plus," he said, clearly trying to sound casual and failing miserably, "there's this ridiculous thing where I miss you enough to make my teeth ache and I find myself looking up Dorothy Parker poetry online for no reason."

"Oh," Ariadne said, blankly. She hadn't been expecting honesty, of all things. "That-- wasn't too bad, actually."

"So are you in?" Arthur asked.

Ariadne nodded blindly. "Yeah," she said. "Yes. Count me in."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to both **anatsuno** and **jule_1** for their excellent French and German translation work on this chapter. Any remaining linguistic errors are the result of my own limited abilities.

**  
_Part Three._   
**

* * *

**Castelrotto, Italy  
20.12.14**

* * *

Ariadne slept fitfully, starting awake at every strange noise: the heavy creak of timbers settling, the sharp pop of embers in the stove, the distant chime of bells on the hour. The wind was an unrelenting drone outside, and at four Ariadne-- exhausted but far from sleep-- conceded defeat.

She wrapped one of the blankets around her shoulders and went to go look out one of the front windows. The moon was a shaving of ice fading in and out behind half-hearted clouds, its light phosphorescent on the drifts below. As she watched, a sharp bluster of wind blew an eddy of snow across the lane. The world outside looked like some terrible ice-bitten planet in a fantasy novel. That was four A.M. for you: isolating and bleak. She'd be forgiven for thinking she was the only person alive for miles.

Ariadne shook her head, shivering, and pulled the blanket closer around her. "Right," she said, and scrubbed at her face. She felt disgusting, gritty-eyed and travel-worn. "If I'm going to be awake," she told her reflection in the window, "I might as well be awake and _clean_ ," and ventured upstairs to test the hot water heater.

Forty-five minutes later she came back downstairs, considerably cleaner, slightly less anxious, and ready to ransack the Brossards' kitchen for coffee or tea or hot chocolate-- something warm and comforting. A quick search of the cupboards yielded a half-empty jar of Nescafé and a tin of loose mint tea. Ariadne wrinkled her nose; she was normally a coffee-drinker, but she'd have to be significantly more desperate before she would sink to instant. Tea it was.

She checked the pilot light on the stove, then set the kettle on to boil. After a moment of staring absently at nothing, she went back to the main room in search of her cellphone, and sent Arthur a quick message.

 _You awake?_ she asked. _I cant sleep._

Not expecting a reply, she set the phone down on the table and did a quick inventory for other any other foodstuffs; while the bread and apple tarts were very good, they did not precisely constitute a balanced diet.

Ariadne discovered several cans of vegetables and condensed soup in the pantry, as well as a half-empty tin of ginger cookies which were probably inedible, a dusty assortment of spices, and bag of white flour which-- judging from the tiny footprints surrounding it on the shelf-- had been targeted by some enterprising mice. The refrigerator stank of sour milk when she opened it, and contained a lonely jar of cocktail onions. The freezer, at least, revealed a half-decent bottle of vodka. If nothing else, she could spend her time in Kastelruth comfortably intoxicated.

The kettle whistled. Ariadne found a clean-looking mug, and searched through the utensil drawer until she found a tea strainer. Her phone rang as she sat down at the table with her tea: Arthur's number.

"I didn't wake you up, did I?" she asked, not bothering with pleasantries. She wrapped a hand around the hot curve of the mug's side; her fingers felt like icicles.

On the other side of the line, Arthur snorted. "Of course you didn't," he said dryly. "I'm always awake at ten to four in the morning." There was a rustling noise, bedsheets tangling over a mattress.

"You could have ignored the text, you know," she said, blowing over the surface of her tea and trying not to picture Arthur, mussed with sleep and bleary-eyed.

"No, I couldn't," he said. "So what's the problem?"

"There isn't one, really," Ariadne said. She took a sip of her tea, wincing at the burn against her tongue. "I'm fine. I just couldn't sleep. Unfamiliar place and everything." Arthur hummed in agreement. "And there's this bell tower in the village, and it rings every hour," she told him. "So I'd doze off for a while, and then-- _ding dong_ , it's midnight, and then one o'clock, and suddenly it was four and I still hadn't really slept."

Ariadne sighed. Set her tea down on the table. "And four o'clock in the morning is just. It's an inhuman time to be awake, you know? And I was worrying about the flat and Dorine, and trying to figure out how this whole _taking down Souza_ thing is going to work--"

"Ah," said Arthur. "So this is an early morning existential anxiety thing."

"Don't make fun," Ariadne said sharply, "I seem to remember having to talk you back into bed a time or two in the past, so drop it."

"Hey," Arthur said, "I'm sorry. I wasn't making fun-- it's early, and I haven't had my coffee. You know I'm not a diplomat when I'm uncaffeinated."

"Yeah, yeah." Ariadne tapped her finger against the mug grudgingly. "I suppose you're forgiven. So. That's why I'm up. I really didn't mean to wake you," she added, apologetic. "I was just--"

"Lonely?" Arthur said, carefully neutral. "Worried?"

She shrugged, smiling a little. "Both, maybe," she said.

Arthur cleared his throat. "So what can I do to help?"

Ariadne sighed. "Tell me I'm being ridiculous?" she offered. "I don't know."

"Don’t think I can, actually. You're not being ridiculous," he said in the same voice he used when sayings things like, _Keep your head down and get ready to run_. It wasn't a voice that encouraged excessive debate. "Look," he said, "taking on Souza isn't safe. At all. You're allowed to be worried about it. In fact," he told her, "I'd be more concerned if you _weren't_ worried. It's no bad thing to be aware of risk, and it's certainly not a bad thing to be worried about your friends."

Ariadne took in a deep breath. "Yeah," she said, nodding to no one. "Yes. I know that. I do. I just--"

"Needed to know it wasn't just you." Something shuffled over the line. "So," said Arthur, businesslike, "that's the worry portion of this morning's emergency. Moving on to loneliness."

Ariadne blew a stream of air over her tea and smiled, imagining Arthur with a yellow legal pad in front of him, dutifully checking off each of her concerns in order. "It's a shame you're on the shady side of the law," she told him. "In another life I bet you were, like, some sort of scarily efficient government official."

"Hush," Arthur said in a mock-disapproving voice. "I'm busy solving all your problems, Ariadne. Pay attention. Now," he said, "you have to understand that loneliness is a very different sort of problem from worry."

"Oh?" Ariadne said, raising an eyebrow and taking another sip of her tea. "How?"

"Well," Arthur told her, serious, "I understand there are things one can do to control the symptoms. Proximity to another person, for example."

"Is that so?" she asked idly. Out the kitchen window, the sky was beginning to lighten around the edges, sliding from black to a brushed velvet indigo. "So if I found someone here to spend time with, that would fix the problem?"

"If you'd like me to fly up there and strangle them, sure," Arther said darkly.

Ariadne laughed, more amused than she probably should have been. "You know, I don't know that we've determined that you have any right to do that," she told him.

"I know," Arthur said. He exhaled, and she could hear the rustle of the bedclothes again as he shifted his position, probably moving to sit up against the headboard. "That doesn't seem to make any difference in my head, though. Sorry."

Ariadne was quiet a moment, and then, trying not to sound hesitant, said, "So are we really going to try this again?" Her fingers were white-knuckled around her mug of tea. "Because last time you did a seriously impressive disappearing act after a few months, and I didn't much appreciate it."

Arthur exhaled heavily. "I know," he said. “The smart thing to do would probably be to ignore me, because I'm. Fucked up is probably a nice way of putting it."

"Probably," Ariadne said. "But it's not like you weren't fucked up, before. This isn't exactly a new thing with you, Arthur. And it doesn't seem to bother me enough to want to stop." She scrubbed a hand through her half-damp hair and sighed. "I guess I'm just looking to know that this is going to be a controlled sort of fucked-up-ness, if we do this again-- you know, try and give me a warning if you've got the uncontrollable urge to run. That sort of thing."

Arthur snorted. "So you're not going to try and fix me, is that what you're saying?" he asked.

Ariadne glared at the ceiling. "I'm not _insane_ ," she told him, her voice tight. "I'm just in love with you." The words felt odd on her tongue: strangely shaped and unfamiliar. She said them quickly-- spat them out, really-- in the hopes that her lack of fluency wouldn't show.

There was a terrifying moment of silence, long enough for Ariadne to think, _Well, shit_ , and begin to pull the phone away from her ear to hang up. Wrong page, bad connection. _Ouch_. It was only four wherever Arthur was; she could blame the conversation on sleep deprivation, maybe.

There was a staticky sound from the speaker, and she nearly dropped the phone in her lap in her hurry to bring it back up to her ear. She heard Arthur let out a slow breath. " _Fuck_ ,” he said, emphatic. "This is-- a very bad idea," he said, low enough that he might have been talking to himself.

"I know," Ariadne said. Her mouth was watery. She wondered if she might throw up.

"And really bad timing."

"Yeah," she agreed. The nausea receded a little.

"Pretty much anyone would be better for you," he said.

"That's really not your call," she reminded him, and felt the beginnings of a wobbly smile growing at the corners of her mouth.

"I--," Arthur said, sounding lost and unlike himself. ”You know it's not just you, right?" he asked. "You've got to know that. It's not. I'm crazy about you. It's-- most of the dreams I still have are nightmares, but not the ones about you." His words tripped over themselves. " _Fuck_ ," he said, sounding frustrated. "I don't want to do this over the phone, I want--"

"I know," Ariadne said, giddy. She curled her toes inside her socks. He feet were blocks of ice, it was five in the morning, there wasn't a decent cup of coffee in the house, she was on the run from a potentially murderous foreign government official, and she didn't give a damn because-- Arthur was crazy about her. This was _ridiculous_. "Christ, where are you right now?"

"--your _mouth_ ," Arthur continued as though he hadn't heard her. She wasn't sure he had; he sounded feverish, words spilling out without stopping. "At the airport-- you have no idea how much I've missed your mouth. I want you next to me in bed here, I want to feel you against me when I wake up, the way you move." His voice dropped, thick with heat. Ariadne felt a shiver of something slide down her spine. "The way you sound. I want to-- I think about that, about making you forget to be quiet, about making you come apart so _hard_ \--"

" _God_ ," she said, interrupting him, her belly tensing with warmth. "Arthur, you have to _stop that_ , jesus," Her ears were burning and she let her forehead thud gently against the cold Formica on the table. She laughed, sounding unhinged to her own ears. "This isn't even my kitchen," she protested weakly, her lips brushing the frozen tabletop. "I can't have phone sex in someone else's kitchen."

Arthur laughed, the sound too loud and surprised in her ear. "That's your objection? Property ownership?"

"A girl's got to have some standards," Ariadne said, turning her head to look at her reflection in the dark glass of the window. She looked-- happy. Pale and tired, but happy. "Also, it's like an ice chest in here. Not exactly ideal."

"I guess not," Arthur agreed, and went quiet. Ariadne listened to the soft sound of their combined breathing for several minutes, content to trace spirals on the Formica. She imagined Arthur was trying to determine whether or not the past few minutes were wise. Ariadne decided not to worry about it; Arthur never let himself make the same mistakes twice.

"So," she said at last. She sat up, wrapping an arm across her chest. The kitchen really _was_ unbearably cold. She could feel the chill settling into her bones along with a long-delayed lassitude.

"So," Arthur echoed, clearing his throat. He sounded like he was searching for some solid footing. Ariadne waited for him to find it. "Does this alleviate the loneliness problem, or make it worse?"

"No," she said, shrugging. Outside, the sky was sliding from indigo to a bruised violet around the edges. "Yes. Both. I don't really care, do you?"

"No," Arthur said, sounding surprised. "I don't."

* * *

At six, Ariadne's tea was cold and her eyelids were beginning to droop. "Go back to bed," Arthur told her. "Let me work on some things on this end, and we can talk later about getting you out of there, okay?"

"Yeah," Ariadne agreed on a yawn. "Sounds good. I need to go into town some time later this morning, anyway. Not much in the way of food around here, and I could use a good guidebook or map or something, just in case."

"You don't have wireless where you are?" Arthur asked, incredulous. "Right, never mind, you're being Heidi. Get one of those prepaid laptop sticks when you're in town, if you can. I can talk you through some basic encryption later."

"It's like you're tech support for the discerning spy," she said, amused, and Arthur snorted.

"I am not Q," he told her. "Let's not get confused about this."

"Well, you're not Bond, either. Suits notwithstanding," Ariadne responded. "If only because I refuse to be a Bond girl. Things tend to go badly for them." She drummed cold fingertips on the table. There was a stripe of deep reddish pink beginning to show above the treeline.

"I never wanted to be Bond," Arthur said. "George Smiley, maybe. Now," he said, and yawned. "Go to sleep. And be careful in town, okay? Watch for CCTV cameras."

"This isn't the sort of place to have a lot, but-- I'll be careful," she said, and debated for a moment whether they were the sort of people who said _I love you_ before hanging up. Probably not, she decided. They hadn't been before. Then again, there hadn't been any discussion of the L-word at all, the last time.

"You're trying to decide whether or not to say it, aren't you," Arthur said, knowingly.

"God, you're a such a jerk," she grumbled, standing up on legs that were cold and stiff with inaction. "I don't know why I bother." She poured the half-drunk tea down the sink and left the empty mug on the counter.

"Because you love me," Arthur said. He sounded slightly mystified by this.

"I guess I must," Ariadne said, and shook her head. "It's really the only explanation."

She hung up with his laughter still warm in her ear, and when she curled back up on the sofa a few minutes later, she had no trouble getting back to sleep.

* * *

Mid-morning found Ariadne tucking her money belt underneath her sweater and around her waist, preparing for the walk into town. She'd eaten the last apple tart while making a mental tally of things to buy. Food thus topped the list, followed by a laptop stick as per Arthur's suggestion. There were a few other items as well-- she'd left Paris without a notebook or anything to sketch on, and her fingers were beginning to itch. A newspaper wouldn't be a bad idea, either.

She pulled the curtains closed at the front of the house, the way they had been when she arrived, and checked that the back door was fully locked. She tucked the remaining contents of her messenger bag-- clothes, mostly, and toiletries-- into the kitchen pantry, shoving everything as far back on the high shelf as she could manage. Ariadne debated taking her laptop with her, but ultimately decided to slide it in the gap between a heavily carved bookshelf and the wall in one of the disused bedrooms upstairs; there wasn't enough on the laptop to make leaving it a real security risk, and she'd hate to have it damaged by the cold and wet outside. Finally satisfied with her preparations, she gathered her coat and gloves, slung the empty messenger bag across her chest, and opened the front door.

The wind had stopped at some point after sunrise. It was still cold, certainly-- but it was a damp and waiting sort of cold, the kind that hung menacingly overhead before a storm. It was nowhere near the bitter wind-blown freeze from the day before.

Ariadne pulled the door shut, locking it behind her. On a whim, she bent down and picked up a loose handful of snow, scattering it in clumps on top of her footprints on the doorstep. It did nothing to obscure the fact that someone had been in and out of the house recently, but if she came back to find the snow in her footsteps compressed, she would at least know to run, and quickly.

She stepped back to check her work. Lights off, doors locked, the fire in the stove was banked to keep the smoke down; aside from the footprints leading to the chalet, the house looked unoccupied. Ariadne shrugged. She couldn't do everything. Besides, from the look of the clouds hanging low and determined over the valley and the heavy feel of the air, there might be enough snow in the next few hours to erase that particular concern.

The walk in to town was shorter than she remembered. The tire ruts in the road were slicker, however-- the slush from traffic re-frozen into twin tracks polished to a high gloss. Trudging through the unbroken drifts off to the side of the road was safer, if a little more work.

Kastelruth was wide awake when she reached it, the main square chattering with tourists in puffy ski jackets. Ariadne wandered into the crowd, pleased at her luck: a few buses had disgorged their loads of holiday travelers, their noses deep in _Lonely Planets_ and waving digital cameras in front of them. A fantastic windfall, really. It was unlikely anyone would attach too much importance to one short, slightly-awkward American incapable of speaking German in the middle of all this mess.

Ariadne waited until it appeared that the crowd was beginning to disperse, filtering into the various shops surrounding the square, and then made her own way over to the small corner market past the church.

A short while later, her messenger bag was considerably heavier, weighed down with groceries, a few English-language news magazines, a two-day-old copy of _Le Monde_ , a sketchbook and some pens, and several maps of the area. She had also bought a postcard of the frescoed hotel on a whim; after all, she had promised to let Cait know she was safe. She wasn't quite sure how she'd send it, but Ariadne was confident she could come up with something.

After a bit of experimentation, Ariadne discovered that the proprietor of the newsstand-- an older fellow, a mustachioed version of Miles with a tan-- knew enough French for her to be able to ask where she might be able to buy a laptop stick. He had shrugged in response, saying she would probably have to drive to Bozen or Meran for that, although several of the larger cafés and ski lodges in the area had free wireless if she needed it.

Ariadne smiled her thanks, and-- at the urging of her stomach-- asked for a recommendation for a place to eat lunch.

"Café Ritterhof," the man said with a decisive nod. "Passé Via Panider, à gauche. Vous allez là, vous commandez la Flecksuppe. Attends," he said, gesturing for her to give him her hand and pulling out a pen. "Je veux l'écrire." Ariadne held out her hand, bemused, and watched as the man carefully traced the letters on the thin skin on the back of her hand. "Comme ça," he said, patting her hand. "Commandez ça. C'est bon pour petite jeune fille, pour réchauffer, avec la neige."

Ariadne looked out the store windows, concerned. The clouds did look ready to split open at any moment. "Est-ce que ça va être très mauvais ?" she asked. If it were going to be especially bad, she would need to bring in some more wood from the wood pile before nightfall.

The man rocked his hand back and forth, then shrugged. "Assez," he said. He held his hand about eight inches from the counter top. Raised it another two or three. "Comme ça, peut-être," he told her, and shrugged again. "Bon pour le ski, si ?"

"Oui, c'est vrai," Ariadne agreed, suppressing the urge to make a face. Ten inches of snow, maybe. Travel would be difficult if she need to leave quickly. That was-- not ideal.

The shopkeeper tilted his head to look out the front windows. "Ca tombera bientôt," he warned, and shook his head. "Allez, allez manger," he said, waving her off with a thin brown hand. "Il ne faut pas tarder trop ou vous ne peux pas retourner vers maison avant Noël."

"Danke," Ariadne said, and left the store with a smile. "Merci de votre aide."

She found the restaurant after only a few wrong turns-- there weren't, after all, all that many streets in Kastelruth. The place was a dim little café squeezed between the lathe-and-plaster storefronts of a used bookstore and some type of woodworking shop with creepy marionettes hanging in the display window, all dressed in overly-precious Tyrolean clothing. A wave of warm air scented with pipe tobacco and hot cider and onions rolled over Ariadne as she opened the door and glanced around. The café appeared to be only moderately busy, with very few obvious tourists, and was clearly understaffed.

Ariadne seated herself at a table near the door to the kitchen, keeping her back to the wall. She made a show of examining the menu as the lone server, a young woman with short, fair hair and flushed cheeks, came to take her drink order.

"Water?" she asked, uncertain as to the language she ought to use. The menu was printed in both German and Italian, neither of which helped her. "And-- Flecksuppe?" she said, pointing to the word the shopkeeper had written on her hand.

The waitress shook her head, her wide mouth twisting up at the side. "Do you know what that is?" she asked. Her English had an odd Boston-style flatness to it, and Ariadne relaxed a little in familiarity. "Or did Georg tell you to order without explaining?"

"Is he the older fellow at the newsstand?" Ariadne asked. She let herself smile and make eye contact. Leaned in a little. Arthur would be annoyed with her for not trying to fade into the background; Eames would tell her likability was more useful at the moment. "Because I don't know any German, and he didn't seem to know any English, so we sort of met in the middle with French. The conversation was a little-- non-specific."

"Lena!" someone back in the kitchen yelled, "Schieb deinen fetten Arsch wieder her!" Ariadne's server rolled her eyes and made a rude gesture at the swinging door. A few of the other customers laughed quietly, seemingly unsurprised by the outburst.

"Georg's English is fine," the waitress told her, ignoring whatever the voice from the kitchen had said. "He just likes to pester the tourists. Look-- prosciutto, do you like it?" she asked, resting a pitcher of water against the curve of her hip. Ariadne nodded. "I'll bring you some Speckknödel, then," said the girl, filling Ariadne's water glass. "Unless you think you truly would prefer tripe soup."

"No, yeah," Ariadne said, blanching a little. "The other thing sounds just fine."

“Lena, du Schlampe!” came a bellow from the kitchen. “Beeil dich verdammt noch mal!"

"Fick dich ins Knie, ich hab keine Zeit," Ariadne's waitress-- Lena, apparently-- called back. "Sorry about that," she said, taking Ariadne's menu. "Brothers. You understand how it is."

Ariande shrugged. "For all I know," she said, "you were just complimenting his culinary abilities."

Lena laughed. "Yes, by all means," she said, wiping her hands on the apron around her waist and heading into the kitchen. "Please believe that instead."

The food, when it came, was remarkably good. Speckknödel turned out to be a huge dish of bread dumplings stuffed with a thin-sliced cured ham, served in a clear broth and topped with chives. It smelled amazing, and Ariande hummed contentedly after her first bite. _Much_ better than the tripe soup likely would have been. She ate until her stomach felt like it was about to explode, scraping her spoon inelegantly along the bottom of the bowl for the last of the broth.

"Where can you have put all of that?" Lena asked half an hour later, glancing suspiciously from Ariadne's spare frame to the empty dish in front of her. "You're such a tiny little thing. Do you have an extra stomach hidden in there?"

"I don't know, it's a skill," Ariadne told her, sitting heavily back in her chair with a contented sigh. "I'm going to be useless for the rest of the day." She piled her cutlery into the bowl and handed it to Lena to clear away. "Give your brother my compliments," she said. "That was fantastic."

Lena let out a put-upon sigh. "Must I? His ego needs no feeding."

"Please," Ariadne told her, "it really was excellent. And so was the service." She glanced over Lena's shoulder to check the weather out the front window. The light outside was a dull watery grey, and a few large flakes were already beginning to fall. "And-- look, here comes the storm." Ariadne tilted her head towards the window.

Lena eyed the weather outside and grimaced. "I suppose you will want your check, then, so you can escape back to your hotel," she said on a sigh, and pulled the receipt out of the pocket on her apron. "Wie Schade. If you stayed just a while longer, you might be stuck here with us overnight," she said, and her mouth curved into a half-smile. "You could share with me, of course."

"I couldn't put you through the trouble." Ariadne dug through her wallet for a fistful of euros. "Besides, I'm a terrible bedmate," she said, handing Lena the money with a grin. "I sleep like an egg beater-- I toss and turn all night."

"Bad dreams?" asked Lena, raising an eyebrow.

"Something like that," Ariadne agreed. She paused, trying to decide if contacting Cait was really worth the risk she was about to take. _I also would rather you not die horribly_ , she heard Cait say, and bit her lip.

"Actually," she said slowly as Lena counted out the change, "could I ask you a favor?"

"Süße, you may ask whatever you like," Lena said, cupping her hand around Ariadne's and depositing the change in it. She leaned in conspiratorially. "I don't often say no."

Ariadne suppressed a laugh; she wasn't sure if Lena was flirting with any real intent or not, but it was certainly fun to play along. And it probably wouldn't hurt the plan Ariadne had thought up while she was eating.

"My friend and I have this stupid game we play when either of us travel," she explained, digging through her messenger bag to find the postcard she had bought at the newsstand. "We try and find the strangest postcard possible, and then send it back to the other person." She flipped the postcard over, showing Lena the enlarged detail of the frescoed cherub, knife in hand, holding up the severed pig's head.

"Ah," said Lena, sliding into the opposite chair at the table. The restaurant had largely emptied out-- perhaps because of the oncoming storm-- and the few remaining patrons didn't seem to need too much attention at the moment. "Our murderous little Putte. He's a local favorite."

Ariadne turned the postcard over to its blank side, saying, "He is pretty great. A little twisted, but fantastic. My friend will love it." She pulled a pen out of her pocket, and laid it on the table.

"The annoying part of the game," Ariadne said, "is that we have to send the postcard back with something written on it in the local language. And," she shrugged, "I don't speak German or Italian. At all." She pushed the pen over to Lena and asked, "Do you think you could write a few sentences for me?"

Lena picked up the pen. "Of course," she said, pulling the postcard in front of her. "Your friend," she asked, "he can read German?"

"Yeah," Ariadne said, not bothering to correct Lena on her pronoun selection. "He's the one who started the language thing. He's this utterly ridiculous polyglot-- speaks six or seven languages and makes me feel _completely_ stupid for only knowing two." Aside from the gender confusion, it was a pretty fair description of Cait.

Lena shook her head, disapproving. "Not very kind of him," she observed.

"No, it isn't," Ariadne said. "Which is why I refuse to have to have to send this back in English." She leaned forward a little. "Want to help me piss him off?"

Lena's eyes crinkled as she uncapped the pen. "Oh, please," she said. "I would love to."

 

* * *

"I've decided I'm staying here permanently," she announced to Arthur, watching the slurry of heavy wet flakes fall beyond the window. "I may move in with a waitress called Lena, if she'll have me. It could be love."

"Hello, Ariadne," he said. "How was your afternoon?"

"Productive, yet snowy," she told him. Her hair was still damp from the walk back from town. "No luck digging up a laptop stick, so no wireless for me-- but I took care of everything else. I even figured out a way to drop a line to Cait." She glanced down at the palm of her left hand, making a face; she'd had to dig a splinter out of it after carrying in several loads of firewood. "And now I'm settling down for the evening and waiting to be snowed in. I think we're supposed to get about a foot of snow tonight."

Arthur cleared his throat. "A few points of clarification, if you please," he said.

"Certainly." Ariadne flopped down on the ugly plaid couch and pulled her new sketch pad out from under a throw pillow.

"How did you-- and I'm not sure I want to know this-- drop Cait a line? I understand you don't want her to worry," he said, sounding serious, "but we've got to assume that Souza's watching her by now."

"I know," Ariadne said, shaking her head. She told him about the postcard. "So it's not in my handwriting, I didn't sign it, and it's written in a language I don't even speak." She squirmed, tilting her hips so she would be able to pull a pen out of her pocket. "Besides," she said, "I didn't even send it to Cait."

"All right," Arthur said after a moment. He was probably annoyed that he couldn't figure out how that was going to work. "I give up. Enlighten me."

"I sent it to Dr. Astor at the college," she said, feeling cautiously pleased with herself. "Souza has no reason to watch her. Everyone knows I can't stand her, and she only tolerates me because Miles is department chair. But Cait’s teaching with her next term again, and Astor always makes her graduate assistants do all the scut work-- copies, office hours, grading-- _and_ picking up her mail from the department mail room. Cait's nosy," she explained. "She looks through Astor's mail for gossip purposes all the time. She'll find the postcard, even if it's not addressed to her."

Arthur hmmed into the phone. "Might work," he agreed. "At worst, it won't be easy to track back to you. Now," he said, his voice going dark, "what's this about running away with a waitress?"

Ariadne laughed. "She's cute, feeds me, and writes beautifully cryptic postcards," she told him. "There may have been some flirting."

"Huh," Arthur said.

"Good _huh_ or a bad _huh_?" Ariadne wanted to know. She uncapped her pen, drawing the outline of an interlocking chain across the blank page.

"More intrigued than anything," Arthur admitted. "Do you think I should be jealous?"

"Sadly, no." Ariadne said, settling back against the arm of the sofa. "Although I think I'd be flattered if you were, but that probably makes me a bad person."

"Probably," Arthur agreed.

"So," Ariadne said, "while I was trying to con waitresses into doing my bidding, what were you up to?" She shaded the first of the chain links with hash marks. Tilted her head. Chains could make an interesting sort of maze-- she'd have to think on it.

"Doing some legwork on Souza's business pre-politics." There was a stuttering sliding sound, wood on wood, and then the open-air noise of traffic. "Meeting with a colleague about the client list for his laundry service."

Ariadne raised her eyebrows. "Daniels?" she asked. Daniels was the only laundry guy Arthur had ever mentioned, so it had to be him. That was-- not good. "The last time I ran into Eames, he said Daniels was setting up shop in Côte d'Ivoire and getting in a little deep with Gbagbo’s people."

Arthur made a non-committal noise.

"Arthur," she said, trying not to sound as annoyed as she felt, "please tell me what you're doing in the middle of a fucking war zone."

"Research," he said, and Ariadne wondered if it was possible to strangle someone over the phone. "Souza was a VP for Petrolco for about fifteen years, and they did a lot of business in Abidjan before the government collapse. I wanted to know when, exactly, the money stopped flowing through here-- if it did." He exhaled heavily over the line. "I thought maybe I could tie Souza financially to some proto-terrorist group, or maybe war crimes-- but Daniels says no."

"And you couldn't just _call him and ask_?" Ariadne said, edging past annoyed into downright angry. "Jesus christ, Arthur."

"Daniels doesn't talk shop over the phone," Arthur said. "And he's a shit liar in person. I needed to be able to see his face." He paused. Cleared his throat. "I'm sorry I didn't say I was headed here before. I should have."

"Yeah, you should have." Ariadne let out a slow breath. "Fair's fair. If you're going to worry about me when I run off to a sleepy ski resort town, I get to worry about you when you decide to take a road trip into a failed state."

"Daniels is set up in the Green Zone, and his security is actually pretty tight," Arthur told her. "Nothing like Tripoli was. I'll be out by tomorrow morning, and I'm being careful."

"You'd better be," Ariadne said darkly. "Unless you've significantly overhauled your wardrobe, none of your vests is Kevlar."

"It's hard to find one that doesn't look bulky under a jacket. Ruins the lines."

Ariadne rolled her eyes. "Arthur. You're not that shallow. Stop it."

"I've been trying to work out the job blueprints," Arthur said, dropping the act. "I think we're going to need to outsource a little of the information gathering, unfortunately, unless one of us wants to risk going back to Brazil."

"No," Ariadne said immediately, shaking her head. "No way in hell."

"Yeah," Arthur agreed. "That's my feeling. Yusuf's suggested a couple locals who are good with information-- he swears they're reliable, and all we really need are schedules, personal habits, and a security count. I can do the rest remotely, I think. Especially if we do this off-site and out of Brazil."

"We are talking about an extraction, here, right?" Ariadne tapped her pen against the paper. As far as she knew, Arthur hadn't attempted inception since the Fischer job. Personally, Ariadne wasn't in a rush to repeat the experience, either.

"I think it's going to have to be extraction, yes. I want Souza's dirty laundry," Arthur said bluntly. "All of it. I want every illegal, unethical, immoral thing he's ever done, and I want to know where to go for documentation on all of it. I want to be able to make something stick."

"I would think that a double murder in connection with mental assault is probably the top of the list," she said, doodling a miniature scale in the margin of her paper. She tried to sketch a blind figure of Justice to go along with it, but it came out a little creepy: Justice looked like she was about to face a firing squad. Ariadne added a cigarette between the blindfolded woman's lips on a whim, then scribbled over the whole thing.

"Possibly, but I wouldn't count on it," Arthur said. "All the big tickets for Souza-- credit history, online habits, taxes, the basics-- are locked down tighter than Fort Knox so far. I should be able to get through eventually, I've never _not_ been able to-- but his whole life looks totally legitimate on the surface."

"And he worked for Petrolco?" Ariadne asked, her forehead wrinkling. "Oil's not usually a business for the pure of heart. There should be something there."

"Which is why I met with Daniels today," Arthur agreed. "But if there's anything dirty about Petrolco, it's not sticking to Souza. And I've gone over his political records. He's not a nice guy, even his allies in the National Congress don't like him, but there's nothing illegal that I can find beyond the Chagas extraction fiasco. Which is-- he's a _politician_ , there should be a patina of grime on his record, at the very least. But when you look at him on paper," he said, sounding distinctly annoyed, "he could have spent the last thirty years doing humanitarian work. I can't even see the seams on this stuff, and it's not like I haven't been looking through everything with a microscope."

"Wonder who does his security work," Ariadne said. "They've got to be good if they're giving you fits."

"Yeah, and if they hadn't potentially been involved in killing my team, I'd probably be interested in meeting them," Arthur said. "But I do have a few lines I'm not interested in crossing."

Ariadne hummed a little, and then asked, "So we do the job, find out the dirt on Souza, and then we-- what? Turn the information over anonymously to the Brazilian authorities or Interpol?"

"Depends," Arthur told her. "I think the goal is to put Souza in a position where he can't do a damn thing to either of us, and hopefully to make him pay for what he did to Putcelli and Magda. Some money for Magda's kid, maybe, if I can track her down. We need information sensitive enough that we can use it to keep Souza handcuffed."

"Blackmail?" Ariadne asked, not judging. She supposed she ought to be more opposed to the concept, but really: the creep had two people's throats slit while they dreamt, not to mention what he'd had done to Arthur. Ariadne found she had limited sympathy for Souza's right to privacy or the moral implications of any potential extortion scam after that.

"Basically," Arthur said. "We might have to adjust the plan if we can't find something better than the murders for leverage."

"You don't think that Souza will want to avoid a murder trial?" Ariadne asked, surprised. Frankly, she thought that incontrovertible evidence connecting Souza to the murders would be a pretty damn convincing piece of leverage.

"He will," Arthur said. "But the problem is that he can try and pin them on me-- or Hammett, rather-- if it comes to trial, and unless I come forward and testify, I can't refute them. I don't think he'd even have to buy the jury to get off on reasonable doubt."

"Ah," said Ariadne, seeing the difficulty. "Nice. So if you _don't_ come forward, you get Interpol on your tail because Souza will tell them everything he knows about you--"

"And anyone I've worked with by extension," Arthur added grimly.

Ariadne continued, nodding. "And if you do come forward, they can charge you with attempted mental assault, at the very least. Possibly murder." She thought for a moment. “I guess turning state’s evidence or whatever is out.”

Arthur made an indistinct sound she took for agreement. “I don’t have a hell of a lot of faith in the Brazilian legal system,” he said. “And the political climate being what it is, I’m not sure anyone would offer me immunity, no matter what evidence we have against Souza. It’s a neat little catch twenty-two."

He sighed, and she could hear him tap something-- a pen, probably-- against wood. "But you want to hear the _really_ fun part of this job?"

"Not really," she said. "But go ahead. Hit me."

"I can’t go into the dream with you," Arthur said.

Ariadne let her head fall back against the couch cushions. "Please tell me this is a rotten attempt at a joke."

"I'm absolutely serious," Arthur said, and he sounded it. "I've been thinking about this. Souza knows me; I've met with the guy several times. He'll recognize me in a heartbeat if I show up in a dream, and he's not an idiot. He understands dream-share. He's going to be a lucid dreamer, probably with some sincerely heavy security. He'd know something was up if he spotted me, and he'd kick himself out. And then we'd be fucked."

"So do a forgery," Ariadne suggested. "If this is just a one-level job--"

"It's going to have to be two," Arthur interrupted. "Souza's a suspicious guy. We need a blind layer. And clearly you've never seen my attempts at forging."

"They can't be that bad," Ariadne said. She couldn't imagine Arthur was as incompetent as he seemed to think he was. After all, he wasn't precisely a brilliant architect, but he was very good-- and he was scarily efficient as an extractor. Not quite Cobb's level of skill, but no one was Cobb. She couldn't imagine that there was a part of the business at which Arthur _wasn't_ proficient.

"They're awful," he said bluntly. "I don't have the imagination for it. My one-offs are obvious, and if I copy, I'm too literal with it. I'm better with analysis than creation," he said. "Trust me on this, you don't want me anywhere in this dream. Souza would figure it out in a heartbeat."

Ariadne rubbed her eyes, sitting back in her chair. This wasn't a wrench in the works; this was more like a whole damn tool chest thrown into a threshing machine. "Arthur, we can't _do_ this job with just one dreamer," she protested. "Not if you think we need two levels. We need at _least_ another body on this." Two would be better, but they could make it work with just one more.

"I know," said Arthur, grim. "I've been thinking about it. Eames is in Berlin, last I heard. Think he'd be willing to do this?"

Ariadne felt her eyebrows jump to her hairline. "You hate working with Eames," she said. "You said you'd rather chew off your hand rather than have to work with him again." That had been after Istanbul, where Eames had delighted in disappearing at odd moments to explore the broken-down bits of the city and do nebulous Eames-ish things for hours at a time. His frequent disappearances had annoyed Arthur only slightly less than his absolute competence during the job itself.

"I've decided I don't need the hand," Arthur said dryly.

Ariande snorted. Her pen had left a large black spot on the page from where she'd held it, unmoving. "I think Eames would do it if we pay him well," she said slowly, and capped the pen before it bled over everything. "It's just another job, after all." She looked back down at her paper: it was covered in little handcuffs and gallows. "With some dubiously exciting potential consequences," she added.

"Do you think you could convince him?" Arthur asked. "He likes you." He said it off-handed, as though he'd only just thought of it, and didn't find it a particularly interesting concept.

Ariadne shook her head. "He wouldn't say no to you, Arthur," she told him. "He just likes to pull your pigtails and watch you turn colors."

"Yeah, well, it annoys the hell out of me," said Arthur, and the eye-roll was nearly audible, "so I think you should be the one to go hunt him down and sweet-talk him, since he refuses to join the twentieth century and get a damn phone.” He cleared his throat and said, changing gears, “I've got an account ready for the ID you're on right now, and I can have two more up and running by tomorrow if you give me the specs, so it shouldn’t be difficult to get you to Berlin."

"Seriously?" said Ariadne, surprised. She had expected it to take Arthur at least a week or two to set her up with some dummy credit cards; apparently she had underestimated his ability to commit credit fraud when motivated. That was good-- that meant she wouldn't have to hole up in Cait's family's place for too long.

"Hang on," she said, and got up to get the money belt from where she'd tucked it back in her bag after her trip into town. "Okay," she said, pulling out her three passports. "You've got the one I'm on now, right?"

"Josie Sayer, Garfield Heights, Ohio?"

“That’s the one,” she said, and read him the remaining two IDs. “Not that I’m complaining,” she said once he had taken down the names and addresses and other information, “but do you think that maybe, the next time you create an identity for you me, you could lay off the genre references? Because the Hitchcock passport is a little much. Someone’s going to catch on.”

"Your name is Ariadne," he said mildly, "and you build mazes. Believe me, people are more credulous with regards to names than you'd think."

"If you say so, Spade. You'd be the one to know," she said. "So. How am I going to get my hands on these little pieces of plastic freedom when you finish with them?"

"I assume there's a post office somewhere nearby?"

"There is," she said, "but I won't be able to pick them up until the twenty-sixth, at least.” She counted it out quickly on her fingers. “The earliest I could leave for Berlin would be Friday or Saturday."

"Why?" asked Arthur. "The sooner we get moving on this, the better."

Ariadne laughed. "It's the twentieth, Arthur," she said. "If you need another day before you can send them, that means they probably won't get here until the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth at the earliest."

"And?"

"And it's _Christmas_ ," she said, exasperated. "The post office won't be open."

"Oh," he said, and was quiet for a moment. "Did you have plans with your family?" he asked, sounding cautious. "It would be a stretch, but I could maybe arrange something to get you stateside if you need. It wouldn't be the smartest thing, probably, but--"

Ariadne swallowed. "Thanks," she said, soft, unaccountably touched, "but that's-- I haven't been home in two years, Arthur. My aunt would probably have a heart attack if I showed up at this point," she said. "And I'd rather Souza not know where she is."

"Of course," said Arthur. There was an awkward pause, and then he asked, "You're all right on your own, then?"

"I'm fine," she assured him, glancing out the window. It was still snowing heavily and the wind was picking up. There'd be new drifts in the morning. "Well," she said correcting herself, "I could be better. But it's not my first holiday by myself. I'll get some work done.”

“Good,” Arthur said. Cleared his throat. “Anyway," he said, "If you think you can leave for Berlin on the twenty-seventh, I'll plan to meet you there on," there was a reluctant rasp of metal on metal, and the sound of water splashing, "the thirtieth. I'll need a day or so extra to keep from throwing up any flags coming into Germany. Hopefully, you can convince Eames before I get there, but--"

"I'm not worried about it," she cut him off. "Eames'll play ball. And if he can't, he can give us an idea of who could fill in." Arthur made a discontented sound. "If Eames suggests someone," she said mildly, "they'll be good and you know it. I'd trust Eames."

"I'd trust a background check, three independent recommendations, and an audition," Arthur said.

"Yes, well," Ariadne said. "If wishes were horses. We'll go with Eames if he's willing, and whoever he suggests if he's not-- _if_ we both feel okay with them. In the meantime," she said, changing the subject, "do you have an idea on design? I think I'm going to be snowed in for most of tomorrow, so I've got some time on my hands, here. I could go ahead on some of the wire work and maze layouts and then alter them when we meet up in Berlin."

"Sounds good," said Arthur. "I'd stick with something impersonal and relatively large scale for the first layer-- a banking district, maybe? Something with some exteriors and a natural vault, in case we need it. The second layer should be more limited, I think."

"Scale it down and close it in," Ariadne said, nodding. She got up and walked over to the window. The snow was falling furiously outside, and she couldn't see the big Norwegian spruce that marked the edge of the Brossards' property anymore. "Someplace he feels comfortable."

"Exactly," Arthur said. "I don't know that Souza's a nightclub sort of guy, but-- velvet rope sort of vibe, I think. You should have seen the restaurants he liked to meet at to discuss business. He appreciates exclusivity."

"Right," Ariadne said, and exhaled against the glass again and traced a quick spiral in the condensation, then segmented it off into a nautilus. "I'll see what I can do," she said. "I'll leave the finishes until we meet up, but I can get some of the basics done before then."

"Excellent," he said. There was a pause and Ariadne let it ride, resting her forehead against the cold glass and smiling to herself. Somewhere in west Africa, Arthur was tying himself in knots. It was-- not _nice_ , exactly, more like reassuring-- to know that she wasn’t the only one still feeling a little tangled up about all this.

"Ariadne," he began. Cleared his throat. Started again. "Ariadne," he said a second time, and stalled out. She let him off the hook.

"Don't get shot on the way to the airport tomorrow, okay?" she said lightly. "I'm not running this job on my own."

"I'll let you know when I'm out," Arthur said, regaining his fluency. "I need to switch phones when I leave the country, but I'll call as soon as a I can."

"Good," she said firmly. Tapped her nail against the glass a few times, and lifted her head. "I should let you go," she said. "Need to go figure out what I'm doing for dinner."

"Yeah," said Arthur, and cleared his throat. "Ariadne. Look," he said after a beat, sounding exasperated-- perhaps with himself. "You know-- I’d. Not over the phone. Is that--"

"It's fine," she said, her toes curling happily in her socks. She'd thought it was something like that. "Really, it's fine."

" _Fine_ -fine," asked Arthur, suspicious, "or just-- fine? Because I don't want to fuck this up."

" _Arthur_ ," she said. "It's okay. I can wait until we're not shouting across continents."

"I can do that," Arthur said. "Next Tuesday." Then, "Stay warm, and I'll talk to you tomorrow," and the line went abruptly dead in her hand.

Ariadne looked down at her phone and shook her head. Smiled. "Love you, too," she said, and went off to forage for food.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not making any promises as to when the final chapter will be out, since we all know how _that_ goes for me, but I would like to reassure readers out there that (a) no, I haven't abandoned this series, and (b) yes, I still am actively working on it. I just write-- slowly. Like, think on a geological time scale, yeah? It'll make the wait go by faster.

**Author's Note:**

> First things first, I need to thank Frenchroast and Anatsuno on LJ for their generous help on the French in this chapter; any linguistic mistakes can be chalked up to my own inability to recognize or correct them. (You would think, then, that perhaps I would be clever enough to set at least _part_ of this story in a Spanish-speaking country, just so that I could do my own translations, but-- oh, no. I had to be _difficult_.) Also, I've had to commit one of the Great Fannish Sins and give Ariadne a last name, since she doesn't seem to have one in the film and I couldn't have her referred to as 'Dr. Ariadne,' because that would be horrific. So for the purposes of this series, she's Ariadne Greer. Ten points to anyone who figures out the reference.
> 
> For those interested in the English translation of the opening scene in this story, here it is, with the translations set off in italics:
> 
> " _Your glass is empty_ ," Cait said, owl-eyed. " _That's not right, why is your glass empty_?" She peered into her own glass suspiciously, then said, decisive, " _We need more wine_ ," and reached out to hook a passing waiter by the arm. The young man scowled, nearly dropping his food-laden tray. " _Another bottle_!" Cait instructed grandly.
> 
> " _Cait, seriously,_ no," Ariadne protested, but without any real force. It was three in the afternoon, and she was more than halfway to drunk already: she hadn't eaten much that morning out of nerves, and lunch had been mostly an exercise in shaking hands and nibbling at the cheese and fruit provided by the department. Unsurprisingly, the wine was going straight to her head. " _We've already had a bottle between the two of us, we don't need another_."
> 
> " _Of course we do_ ," Cait argued. " _How often do you expect to earn a Ph.D? It's something to celebrate. And since you won't let me throw you a party, celebration will have to mean_ more wine." Cait upended the nearly-empty bottle of wine over Ariadne's glass, tapping the bottom to shake out the dregs.
> 
> Ariadne laughed. " _All right, all right_ ," she conceded. " _But you're paying for my taxi, because there's no way I'm walking home if we keep going_." The waiter returned, still scowling, thumping a bottle of wine down on the table and drawing the cork with a distinct air of annoyance. " _Thanks_ ," Ariadne said, and the waiter rolled his eyes and walked away. Ariadne sighed contentedly. " _God, I love Paris_."
> 
> " _This is because you're a masochist_ ," Cait explained with the casual derision of one born outside the city, and poured new glasses for them both.
> 
> " _I am_ not _a maso-, masa-_ , oh, fuck it all, I'm too drunk to manage French right now."
> 
> Cait blinked slowly, processing the linguistic shift, then said, "I may be too drunk for English. We will have to see."
> 
> And there you have it.
> 
> The next chapter to "Words and stones" should be up by Sunday, September 26th.


End file.
